A quietly produced list of priorities that some see as an attempted coup of the Fort Ord Reuse Authority's regional power has become the latest front in the battle over development on the former Army base.

Proponents say the "guiding principles" represent the cities' sovereign rights to pursue economic redevelopment. Opponents like the Sierra Club say they are a dishonest effort to usurp FORA's regional authority while holding it financially responsible for infrastructure improvements.

Some suggested one of the driving forces behind the principles is the proposed Monterey Downs development.

The document was written by the members of the FORA administrative committee, each representing a jurisdiction with land-use authority on Fort Ord.

They have proposed it be used to guide the board as it implements the reassessment of the 1997 base reuse plan. The proposal was debated at the Dec. 14 board meeting and is scheduled to be taken up again in Friday's meeting.

The guiding principals include several widely supported ideals, such as prioritizing removal of vacant buildings and creating middle-income jobs.

Among its more controversial proposed instructions is that FORA complete or provide funding for all capital improvements, including roadways, transportation systems and an augmented water supply, before the agency dissolves in 2020.

The reassessment report states some improvements planned in 1997 may not be needed for decades because of the economic recession.

The guidelines discourage FORA from changes that would require a new environmental impact report and instructs the agency to monitor but not re-evaluate the condition of the Salinas Valley Groundwater Basin.

Concern over aquifer

Environmentalists have begun to raise alarms about the sustainability of allocations from the basin's deep aquifers.

But the most controversial of the 16 guidelines is one that calls for land-use decisions to be made only by the land-use jurisdictions.

The FORA board's current land-use role is to determine a project's consistency with the 1997 base reuse plan. Under the guiding principles, any land-use votes would be restricted to representatives from Marina, Seaside, Del Rey Oaks, Monterey and Monterey County, excluding Carmel, Pacific Grove, Sand City and Salinas, which have no land on the base.

The suggestion has reverberated all the way to the state capitol, where then-Assemblyman Bill Monning spent five months last year fighting to get FORA's authority extended past its statutory 2014 sunset date. At the behest of the cities, who pleaded for the continued guidance of the regional board, Monning won six more years for FORA.

The newly elected senator is not happy. At the Dec. 14 meeting, Monning's representative, Nicole Charles, said Monning was stunned and "disappointed" when he learned about the guiding principles in his agenda packet.

Referring to the call for land-use decisions to be made by the landing-holding jurisdictions alone, Charles said the proposal would violate state law that established FORA as a regional agency.

On Monday, Monning said a number of the principles "appear to contradict what was defined in the legislation I authored, and which was enacted on Jan. 1, 2013, to extend the sunset date of the Fort Ord Reuse Authority (FORA)."

"In the best interest of all communities affected by FORA," he said, "the (FORA) board should revisit the guiding principles to ensure it does not subject itself to possible litigation and wasted tax payer dollars."

FORA Executive Officer Michael Houlemard said he knew nothing about development of the guiding principles until the administrative committee presented them to the executive committee.

"I will tell you straight up, in order for that voting structure to happen," Houlemard said, the land-use jurisdictions would need new legislation and they would be sorely pressed to find a sponsor in Monning or any other state legislator.

The FORA board will take up the issue again Friday when it considers hiring a facilitator to run a series of workshops addressing options laid out in the Fort Ord Base Reuse Plan Reassessment. If the Dec. 14 meeting is any indication, the debate could be lively.

At last month's meeting, county Supervisor Jane Parker said the guidelines "fly in the face" of what the board had represented to the state in seeking FORA's extension.

"If we want to leave all the decisions to the underlying land-use jurisdictions, then what do we need FORA for?" she asked. "I think it really ... shows a level of intellectual dishonesty that has really crept into the entire issue of land use planning on the former Fort Ord."

"How is it that nine votes out of 13 (on the FORA board) have come together to discuss and propose this particular item and the rest of the board didn't know about it," he said. "I was kind of wondering, where's the Brown Act in this process?"

While no elected officials apparently were involved, documents included in the board's packet indicated that staff members from Marina, Seaside, Del Rey Oaks, Monterey and Monterey County met and drew up the guidelines. Those staff members also are appointed and make up FORA's administrative committee, making them bound by the state's open meeting law.

Seaside Deputy City Manager Diana Ingersoll said the meeting was not called as an administrative committee meeting, but rather to discuss cities' final comments regarding the reassessment report. None of the jurisdictions without land holdings was invited.

Edelen defends guidelines

While Monterey Principal Planner Elizabeth Caraker attended the meeting, City Councilwoman Nancy Selfridge, who sits on the FORA board, said she was unaware of the guidelines until she received her packet for the Dec. 14 FORA meeting. She believes that Mayor Chuck Della Sala's recent effort to replace her on the FORA board was the result of her objections to the guidelines.

Del Rey Oaks Mayor Jerry Edelen defended the guidelines, describing them as "an emotional reaction" to a feeling that there is a significant element that is opposed to all development on Fort Ord."

"Our citizens will decide what Del Rey Oaks will do," he said. "We will not have something thrown down our throats by folks who have nothing to do with our overall land use."

Michael Salerno, spokesman for Keep Fort Ord Wild, said Edelen's comments were a thinly veiled dig at his group, which has lawsuits pending against FORA.

"If (the cities) want to go ahead and develop what's already been approved, the activist community is not going to object to that," he said. "There are plenty of developments (to complete) before they even think about developing in open spaces.

"Now, none of those developments are in Del Rey Oaks or Seaside's portions of Fort Ord," he added, "but that's the reason for a regional planning board."

The elephant in the room was the proposed Monterey Downs residential and horse-racing project in Seaside, whose developers were present at the Dec. 14 meeting but did not comment.

Sierra Club's stance

The project could have been the subject of a comment in a letter from the Sierra Club objecting to the suggested limitation on land-use votes.

"Does this mean, for example, that only Seaside would be allowed to determine whether or not a Seaside project would be compatible with the educational mission of nearby (CSU Monterey Bay), significant parts of which are located in Marina and the county?" the group asked.

Some in the environmental community have questioned the appropriateness of placing a horse track next to a university.

Seaside City Councilman Ian Oglesby bristled at the question.

"Now Seaside is supposed to be concerned to make sure we don't impact the college's mission even if that means we cannot bring any new tax revenue in?" he asked, staring across the room at CSUMB President Eduardo Ochoa. "I don't think my citizens are in agreement with that and they love CSUMB."

It was a 1998 lawsuit settlement with the Sierra Club that required FORA to conduct the base reuse plan reassessment. In its letter, the group said the guidelines "undermine what the reassessment process achieved, including the disclosure of the extent to which the jurisdictions' and FORA have yet to implement the policies and programs in the 1997" base reuse plan.

Addressing the board, Sierra Club representative Jane Haines said the guiding principles violate the spirit of the settlement and the letter of the law.

"What was the point of the reassessment," she asked, "if you're going to say, 'Well, we're not going to change anything'?"